Rising interest rates, bank failures, and inflation have dominated the headlines in 2023. All three topics are scary and may be causing you some stress about what is happening in the world or even how is this impacting Heritage Family Credit Union.

Like you, we are seeing a rise in operating costs due to inflation. To help combat those rising costs, we have deployed excess deposits into an investment portfolio (with the help of an industry leading advisor). You may have heard in the news, that some failing banks had large investment portfolios that contributed to their overall failure. Their story, and portfolio is very different than ours at HFCU. While we do have investments, our options are very limited in comparison to our bank friends. To describe that, I like to reference ice cream. Our options tend to be plain vanilla or maybe delving into chocolate chip; but our regulators would never allow us to take a trip to rocky road, there are just too many ingredients to ensure safety and soundness. Why are they so restrictive, you may ask? Because we take our fiduciary responsibility for your money seriously and wouldn’t want to put it at unreasonable risk. So, rest assured HFCU is in a financially sound position.

We have also seen instances where the banks have started selling off their investments to bring in cash flow for their branches. Is this an option for us? Of course. But do we plan on it? No! I am not sure about the failing banks, but HFCU has multiple sources of liquidity to access if needed, before we would even consider selling off any investments. Finally, during this rapidly rising rate environment, we continue to offer lending for a full spectrum of members, from shorter-term auto to mid-term small business loans to longer term mortgage loans. We have not slowed our lending like, some financial institutions. We are constantly looking at our lending rates to determine what is the best we can do to make life affordable for our members when they need access to funds while maintaining our financial stability.

All of these items I am describing to you are a part of our risk management process. We run contingency and worst-case scenario modeling for all our products and services on a quarterly basis. In all scenarios, HFCU comes back as having very strong equity and being a low-risk financial institution. Our regulatory partners at the NCUA recently examined our risk management process, and we received very high marks.

All in all, we are doing the things to serve you the best way we know, while maintaining financial stability so we can serve your family’s financial needs for generations to come. I would be remiss if I didn’t add, if you are feeling the pinch of rising rates and inflation, yourself, please reach out to us. We have one of the largest financial counseling programs out there and would be honored to help you and your family navigate these challenging times. We are here for you and I truly hope this helps to ease your mind a just little about what is happening here, financially, at Heritage Family Credit Union.